IS PLURIBUS THE BEST SHOW OF THE YEAR? with Mark Kermode & Jack Howard

Summary

Kermode on Film: "IS PLURIBUS THE BEST SHOW OF THE YEAR?"

Host: Mark Kermode
Guest: Jack Howard
Date: March 3, 2026

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Episode Overview

Mark Kermode and Jack Howard dive deep into Pluribus, the breakout TV show created by Vince Gilligan (of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fame). The conversation explores Pluribus's core premise, its philosophical and emotional impact, and how it stands within modern television. The hosts also touch on Gilligan's storytelling trademarks, the evolution of "prestige TV," and comparisons to other iconic series.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Vince Gilligan's TV Legacy and the Lead-up to Pluribus

• Gilligan's Evolution:
  • Jack notes his late (re)discovery of Breaking Bad and then Better Call Saul, influenced by Pluribus.
    • “Because of Pluribus, I wanted more Vince Gilligan and more Rhea Seehorn… I put on Better Call Saul. And I have to agree at the moment, I think it is a perfect, perfect show.” – Jack (03:11)
  • Both agree Better Call Saul eventually surpassed Breaking Bad.
    • “It’s actually better than Breaking Bad.” – Mark (02:25)
• Collaborative Genius:
  • Jack praises Gilligan’s open acknowledgment of the writer’s room, debunking the “lone genius” myth.
    • “He doesn’t. He’s kind of shoving away the I’m a genius thing… he just works very, very well with a great team.” – Jack (08:10)

Pluribus – Concept, Execution, and Themes

• Setup & Premise:
  • Signal from outer space arrives via the Very Big Array (famously featured in Contact), containing a DNA sequence. The resulting global event leads to a viral "hive mind"; humanity becomes “E pluribus unum – from many, one.”
    • “Everyone gets infected, but the infection is that everyone becomes one.” – Mark (09:46)
  • Rhea Seehorn stars as the main character, one of the sole individuals immune to the hive mind—tasked with “saving the world from happiness.”
    • “She has to save the rest of the world from this hive mind… just brilliantly done.” – Mark (11:12)
• The Horror of Harmony:
  • The infected are peaceful, honest, cooperative—a utopia that Mark and Jack see as deeply unsettling.
    • “They can’t lie. They don’t do harm… and it’s horrifying.” – Mark (10:56)
    • “Horrifying harmony.” – Mark (11:12)
• Philosophical Readings:
  • Multiple interpretations are offered: a parable for AI, the pandemic, and especially, alienation and depression.
    • “It’s just this, like, fantastic concept that has allowed people to project our own, like, fears and our own kind of, like, anxieties….” – Jack (11:44)
    • “It’s a fairly depressed person being told by everyone else, why aren’t you happy?... why can’t you just be happy like us?” – Jack (21:36)
• The "Others":
  • Most “immune” survivors are not heroes—one is an egomaniac who uses Air Force One and seeks to be Elvis for his own pleasure.
    • “Of course there’d be somebody like this who’s just fully embraced it and been like, I don’t see the problem.” – Jack (13:23)
  • Carol’s (Rhea Seehorn) isolating journey is central; her actions have massive consequences, sometimes catastrophic.
    • “She is the harbinger of doom… she’s a destructive force.” – Mark (25:43)

Standout Moments, Characters, and Imagery

• Carol and the Hive Mind:
  • Carol’s isolation, her ambivalence about connection, and her unique ability to tell stories in a world where shared consciousness has eradicated new narratives are highlighted.
    • “The fact that she’s an author is the thing. Oh, yeah, of course she can tell stories and nobody else can.” – Mark (29:30)
• John Cena’s Cameo:
  • The entity “formerly known as John Cena” becomes the spokesperson for the hive mind, providing a chilling rationalization for the group’s cannibalism.
    • “It is explained to us why this is okay by John Cena.” – Jack (18:03)
• The Atom Bomb Cliffhanger:
  • The finale concludes with Carol requesting an atomic bomb, echoing earlier discussions about boundaries and agency.
    • “She asks for an atom bomb. And that is how the show finishes on season one.” – Jack (15:38)
    • “It would be okay to say no. It would be the right thing to say no.” – Mark (15:51)

Comparative Television Talk

• Pluribus is compared to Twin Peaks, Succession, Severance, Euphoria, Atlanta, and others for its ambition and willingness to embrace complexity and darkness.
• The hosts lament the long wait between seasons (“…it will be, I think, a couple of years before we [get Season 2].” - Jack, 29:45).

Big-Picture Thoughts: The State of TV & Sci-Fi

• Television as a Medium for Daring Storytelling:
  • TV can now be more adventurous than mainstream cinema; “the writer rules.” (Succession, Better Call Saul, etc.)
    • “Television has been allowed to be more daring than the mainstream cinema…” – Jack (35:17)
• Science Fiction’s Power:
  • The hosts reflect on the allegorical nature of sci-fi, citing Vonnegut and Douglas Adams as touchstones.
    • “Science fiction is a genre of ideas. And yes, the writing may be bad… But the ideas are brilliant.” – Mark (39:07)
• Adult Science Fiction:
  • Mark celebrates the maturity and ambition of series like Pluribus, calling it “my UFO” (a reference to Gerry Anderson’s classic).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It’s actually better than Breaking Bad.” – Mark (02:25)
• “Horrifying harmony.” – Mark (11:12)
• “She has to save the rest of the world from this hive mind, and it’s just brilliantly done.” – Mark (11:12)
• “It’s a fairly depressed person being told by everyone else, why aren’t you happy?... why can’t you just be happy like us?” – Jack (21:36)
• “She asks for an atom bomb. And that is how the show finishes on season one.” – Jack (15:38)
• “You can’t ever have stories anymore because everyone knows the story. Right. You can’t tell a joke because everyone knows the punchline.” – Mark (18:22)
• “Rhea Seehorn absolutely carries the show. She’s unbelievable.” – Jack (25:19)
• “It’s like playing with Google.” – Mark (29:41)
• “Adult science fiction… is back. And it’s like, it’s… it’s like being a kid, but like grown up.” – Mark (38:01)
• On Pluribus’s ending: “It finished on such a bang of like, now this is where we are… I’m almost like, come on, then, next.” – Jack (30:42)
• “The Wire... arguably the greatest television program ever made.” – Mark (35:03)
• “Succession is the greatest TV show ever made.” – Jack (35:52)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:40 – 03:35: Introduction, how Jack and Mark came to Vince Gilligan’s work and discussion of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
• 09:15 – 12:18: Set-up and philosophical layers of Pluribus.
• 13:00 – 15:51: The “other” survivors and Carol’s moral quandaries; the setup for the atom bomb finale.
• 17:14 – 19:39: The horrifying rationality of the hive mind, storylessness, and Carol’s creative isolation.
• 21:06 – 22:44: The depression/happiness parable and plural readings of the show's dilemma.
• 25:32 – 26:11: The cost of Carol’s resistance; consequences of confronting the hive mind.
• 29:45 – 32:20: Season endings, episode length, and the agony of waiting for more.
• 35:17 – 38:44: TV vs. cinema, science fiction’s value, and the “golden age” of television drama.

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Overall Takeaway

Kermode on Film delivers a passionate, layered discussion that cements Pluribus as a landmark TV achievement in science fiction and drama. The hosts navigate its thematic ambiguity, emotional impact, and craftsmanship, drawing connections to the history of the genre and the transformation of television storytelling. For fans of smart, ambitious TV—and Vince Gilligan’s unique brand of slow-burn suspense—Pluribus is the talk of the year.

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[End of Summary]

Transcript

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[Mark Kermode]

Hi, this is Mark Kermode. Thanks for downloading this Kermode on Film podcast, or indeed for watching us on YouTube. I'm here upstairs at the Sun Pub in Drury Lane with Jack Howard.

[Jack Howard]

Hello, Jack.

[Mark Kermode]

What are we talking about today?

[Jack Howard]

We're going to be doing a change of pace today. We're talking about a television show called Pluribus. And I want to tell you now, what I usually say at this point is, if you haven't seen it, don't watch this or listen to this, or do. I don't care, I'm not your dad. But at this point, I'm gonna say, do not watch or listen to this. If you haven't seen Pluribus, do yourself

[Mark Kermode]

a favor, watch Pluribus.

[Jack Howard]

Go and watch it.

[Mark Kermode]

It is 10 hours of your time. It's not that much.

[Jack Howard]

It's created by Vince Gilligan, who you will know of Breaking Bad, or better course, hall of Fame. He has made another fantastic piece of work. I do not want to be the one to spoil it for you, but if you have seen it, enjoy our conversation. Am I right in thinking that you came to Breaking Bad quite late?

[Mark Kermode]

Yes, absolutely. So what happened was Child two, who, you know, the person who introduced us, weirdly enough, to two great things. To two great things. Exactly. Exactly. He had watched Breaking Bad. I think we had, like, maybe I. Somehow I'd acquired a box set of or something. Maybe as I was doing the culture show. Something. Anyway, he had watched it and just loved it. And then I think it was probably lockdown. Oh, wow.

[Jack Howard]

You came to it very late then.

[Mark Kermode]

Really late. Really, really late. And we started watching it and we watched the whole thing and absolutely loved it. And I had, you know, I hadn't been interested at all in it. Although, weirdly Enough. I'd been going to screenings at whichever, whichever studio it was that was, that was making it. And they had the poster of him in the pants with the gun and the, you know, for ages. I said, I'm not interested that at all. Anyway, so then we watched the whole of Breaking Bad and I loved it. And then Better Call Saul was like, oh, they're doing. You know, because by that point you caught up with itself. I thought, yeah, really, really. And then I watched both Better Call Saul and went, it's better. It's actually better than Breaking Bad. And I remember having this conversation with you. It's. It's better than Breaking Bad.

[Jack Howard]

I had had a similar thing to you because I, I'm due a rewatch of Breaking Bad because I really liked it, but I wasn't as on the train as everybody else. Like everybody el the greatest thing that's ever happened to anything. And I was like, yeah, it's a good television show.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah.

[Jack Howard]

And then when they made Better Call Saul, I was like, I'm not that bothered about going back to the Breaking Bad world. I don't particularly remember the Saul Goodman character being that compelling that he could have his own TV show.

[Mark Kermode]

So that seemed like a weird thing, didn't it?

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, really, I just left it. And I now have watched Pluribus and because of Pluribus I wanted more Vince Gilligan and more Rhea Seehorn and more Rhea Seehorn. So I put on Better Call Saul. And I have to agree at the moment, I think it is a perfect, perfect show. I am a few episodes away from finishing it. I'm in the middle of season six.

[Mark Kermode]

So is he Saul yet or is he still Jimmy?

[Jack Howard]

He's Saul. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's become Saul Goodman and Saul Goodman. I had to explain that to my girlfriend. Like before the show started, I'd started saying, Saul Goodman, it's all good, man. And she was like, oh. I was like, I can't believe you didn't know that. I can't believe you didn't know that anyway. But because of Pluribus, I've watched now Better Call Saul and what's interesting about it is Rhea Seehorn, I don't know if you know this, she was supposed to be like quite a small part of the show. And because of how good she was, she inspired Vince Gilligan to write her into the rest and become basically a two hander with Saul by the end of the show. And now obviously she has Pluribus as her leading show, which is unbelievable.

[Mark Kermode]

We're going to talk about Pluribus, because we both have. But on the Better Call Saul thing, I think the thing that is so brilliant about it is the dynamic of slipping Jimmy and his relationship with his brother, who is so brilliantly played by. And there is proper empathy and heartbreak in that relationship. And because of the way that Saul Goodman is in Better Call Saul when he's, you know, he's just this kind of, you know, fast and loose lawyer and blah, blah, blah, blah. What Better Call Saul does is, firstly, it actually does give you the base of how that character got there. All the stuff about him and his brother is heartbreaking. All the stuff about him and Rhea Seehorn, because it keeps jumping to, you know, beyond Breaking Bad. And he's making the, you know, the

[Jack Howard]

black and white sequences.

[Mark Kermode]

And you think, how. How are they going to. How is this all going to tie up? Because you know that by the time.

[Jack Howard]

Well, that's the question I have at the moment.

[Mark Kermode]

Fine.

[Jack Howard]

Well, that's what was interesting about it, is at the moment I'm like, it has to be tragedy, like, and I. And I so don't want it. And it's one of those shows.

[Mark Kermode]

Can I just say it? The final episode is absolutely. Chef's Kiss. Yeah, it's.

[Jack Howard]

I think it's the top rated episode on IMDb.

[Mark Kermode]

Oh, is it?

[Jack Howard]

Because I was, like, looking to see what. What episodes are left that are in the top 10. And it's like four of the episodes that I' left her in the top 10 races on IMDb.

[Mark Kermode]

For me, they just do it brilliantly.

[Jack Howard]

The. The whole thing, weirdly, has become this, like, love story in a way that I didn't expect. That she's almost like the. The anti version of. Of Walter White's wife. What's her name?

[Mark Kermode]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jack Howard]

God, people are gonna kill me. You know, I mean, but she. She's the one who, like, keeps egging him on and keeps joining in, and it's come become this weird love story of them both kind of indulging and helping each other out. So I'm like, oh, God, it's gonna be a tragedy because she's not gonna be in Breaking Bad, so why is she not in breaking.

[Mark Kermode]

That's it, right?

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, it's that. So, yeah. Anyway, so. But for me, so far, the. The best episode of Better Call Saul has been the courtroom drama between him and Chuck where I. Maybe you get this because, you know, you watch film and television all the time. A lot of the time I feel like I'm observing it and I'm going, yeah, this is a good story. I'm into this. I love the way it's directed. I feel like I'm in safe hands with that episode. It was like the. Everything blurred away, and I was just in it. And at one point, I had to, like. I noticed how fast my heart was beating when I was watching because it was so brilliantly written, so fantastically performed. Oh, just as you just said, Chef's kiss.

[Mark Kermode]

And also the betrayal. There is the kind of the Shakespearean betrayal. The brother. Brother. You know, the fact that his brother says, you were always slipping Jimmy. That's what you. He can't be part of the firm. He can't. Despite the fact that he's. He's. Because he's always going to be that character.

[Jack Howard]

And the fact that you feel like he's pushed him. You've pushed him into that. Like, you embraced him. And maybe it would have been different if you'd embraced him, but because you've pushed him further away, he's going to become more of that now.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, yeah. And then. And. And so it makes sense of how he is by the time you get to Breaking Bad. And I think that's. That's just genius. The episode in which they do the con on the guy in the. When they're in the. You know, in the restaurant, she says, let's go back and just do one. I love that because it's like she's got the. You know, she's got the taste for it.

[Jack Howard]

But then you find out that when she was a kid that she stole something and then her mom encouraged her for it, and it's like, oh, it's always been, like, kind of laced there. So, I mean, like, Vince Gilligan, man, like, and his team. Because what I love about him as a. As a filmmaker is that he's always, in his interviews, firstly, just this, quite, like, wholesome Southern guy. Like, he's just like, yeah, I'll make Breaking Bad. Like, he's just like, yeah, me and my team, we make Breaking Bad. And he's always so open about the collaboration in the writers room.

[Mark Kermode]

And.

[Jack Howard]

And it's not. He doesn't. He's kind of shoving away the I'm a genius thing and going like, no, he just works very, very well with a great team of writers and filmmakers.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay, well, this all brings us to Pluribus. So now we've seen the whole of the first. We know that there is a second season coming.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah. God knows when, though.

[Mark Kermode]

It's going to be a while, isn't it?

[Jack Howard]

Yeah. He said it's going to take him a while. Which I'm like, yeah, no, so, so good. I want more of it now.

[Mark Kermode]

If you haven't seen Pluribus, I mean, again, what you're doing, seriously, it's. I mean, it's like 10 episodes, isn't it? And they're. They're all brilliant and each one builds more brilliant.

[Jack Howard]

And if you like that kind of style of Vince Gilligan's patient storytelling, where you just like, observe, like the one, the storylines with Red Light Fever. Again, we've talked about this before where, like, names just go out of my head. Mike.

[Mark Kermode]

Yes.

[Jack Howard]

From Better Call Saul. I'm Breaking Bad, obviously. But specifically in Better Call Saul, where you're just observing him for a while and you're not. There's no talking. It's just, what's he up to? That kind of storytelling is very much transferred over into Pluribus. So if you like that kind of stuff. This is just.

[Mark Kermode]

So the setup of Pluribus is at the beginning. There seems to be some signal has arrived from outer space. They're listening to on that thing, which is actually called the Very Big Array, because that's actually the name of it.

[Jack Howard]

You know, the one from Contact.

[Mark Kermode]

The one from Contact, Yeah, exactly. It's now known as the place that Jodie Foster sits in. Contact. Yeah. And they. There's a message and they don't know what it is, and then they decode it and they realize that it's a DNA chain, and then they make the DNA chain and then this thing happens, which is. Which has a kind of relationship with the zombie movies, which is everyone gets infected, but the infection is that everyone becomes one. And it's the E Pluribus unum. You know, from many one.

[Jack Howard]

The hive mind.

[Mark Kermode]

Yes, the hive mind. Precisely. And yet there are some people, but there's a handful of people around the world for whom this hasn't happened. And the central character in this pigment is Rhea Seehorn's character. And she discovers very early on that the whole of the hive mind world thinks, you know, with this kind of unified thought, and they're all getting on and they're all cooperating, and she is now trying to contact the other people. There's only a handful of them to save the world, but the point is from happiness to save the world from happiness. And it's not an invaders from Outer Space, because they're not alien invaders. Although the thing has arrived from outer

[Jack Howard]

space, even the way it's transferred is not like A zombie with a bite, but with a kiss.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, that's right, exactly. It's just. It's just a contact thing. And the. What's genius about it is that very quickly you go, what? So what? So, okay, so the thing is, they're all like. They. They can't. The. The infected, if you want to call them that, they can't lie.

[Jack Howard]

The others.

[Mark Kermode]

The others, they can't lie. They don't do harm. They won't kill animals. They won't even pick fruit. They turn off the lights to save power. They all work together and cooperate. And it's horrifying.

[Jack Howard]

Horrifying. Harmony.

[Mark Kermode]

Horrifying. Harmony. And. And over the course of the 10 episodes, she goes through this sort of series of different states of, you know, hating them. And then at one point she's isolated and missing them. And an awful lot of it is literally this one character dealing with the fact that she's the only person who isn't part of the hive mind and she has to save the rest of the world from this hive mind. And it's just brilliantly done.

[Jack Howard]

It is.

[Mark Kermode]

It's. Because it doesn't give you a position. It just goes, yeah. They go, it.

[Jack Howard]

Also, there's been a lot of debate about, well, what is it about, though? And some people are very much looking at it as a. As a parable for AI. Some people are looking at it as a parable for the pandemic, right? And I think all of the above and none of the above. I think it's just this, like, fantastic concept that has allowed people to project our own, like, fears and our own kind of, like, anxieties onto it in this brilliant way that TV and film can.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that's remarkable is just how philosophical it is. When I was a kid, Star Trek was on, right? And you'd watch Star Trek and Star Trek would always have some kind of moral conundrum. I mean, G. Roddenberry was always dealing with, you know, prejudice and all that sort of stuff. And you talk about it in the Polygram the next day, oh, what do you think about that? In the case of Pluribus, the conversation is, why is it horrifying? Why is it horrifying that they've all become one and they're all working together? And of the other people that she meets, the other people who aren't infected, who are variously around the world, they're horrible. And it's like, you know, the one who wants to be Elvis and wants to live in and wants to have everybody as his sex slave.

[Jack Howard]

Yes. The moment. I mean, maybe you called it as well. But when they arrived to meet and they were like, the other one's gonna take a little bit of time. Because it took a. Took us a moment to get the plane he wanted. I was like, oh, he's gonna turn up on Air Force One. He's gonna turn up on Air Force One. And then you meet him and you're like, oh, yeah, of course there'd be somebody like this who's just fully embraced it and been like, I don't see the problem.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jack Howard]

And. And what I really, really liked about it as well is that Carol thinks that she is a certain kind of person, and then she's faced with the real hero. Do you know what I mean? Like, when she. When she. She's left isolated for a while and then invites them back in in a great sequence where she's painting something on the road and you wondering, and what is she writing? And then it just says, please come back. And then she invites them back in and kind of starts a relationship. Whether or not she's aware that, you know, that it's weird or not. Like, I don't know what it is.

[Mark Kermode]

Well, she is aware that it's weird because it's the thing about. Have I just slept with the whole world?

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mark Kermode]

Because of the hive mind.

[Jack Howard]

Yes, yes. And then she meets. What is the character's name? The man who travels all the way to.

[Mark Kermode]

I'm never any good at characters. Neither am I. Yeah.

[Jack Howard]

But everyone who's listening knows who I'm talking about. He travels lengths to get to her and refuses to even interact with the hive mind. Doesn't even really know what it is, but knows that something is wrong. That. I mean, that great moment where his car breaks down and then his mother arrives and says, please let us help you. We love you. And he says, you're not my mother. My mother is a.

[Mark Kermode]

Which is great.

[Jack Howard]

And then when Carol is faced with. Like, that. What I mean. This is what I mean about the. Vince Gilligan's writing. He's created a character in Carol who believes that she's. I'm the one. I'm the only one who wants to save the world. Why am I the only one who wants to save the world? And then she indulges in ways like she's. You know, she's treating them like Amazon, like, I need this done. I need this done.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah. And, you know, because the thing is that they. That what they said is, it's you know, we want, we want you to be happy, Carol. We want. So whatever you want, anything. So we can fix you. So we can fix you. That's right. And there's also, there's a kind of ticking clock which is that she, because they can't lie, they do have to tell her that they are working on a solution to why she hasn't become part of the hive mind and they are going to get there. And she says, well, how long is it going to take as well? You know, it's happening quite fast and they can't lie. So whenever she asks for anything. So at one point she asked for a hand grenade, you know, but the thing that happens at the very, very end of the very last episode, which is the, which is the hand grenade on steroids thing, you know, it's set up, isn't it?

[Jack Howard]

In that episode, she's like, would you give me an atom bomb? And they're like, do you want an atom bomb? And she's like, it would be okay to say no to this. And then at the end, yes, she asks for an atom bomb. And that is how the show finishes on season one.

[Mark Kermode]

And the thing that's genius about it is that when, when the thing happens with the grenade, she says, why would you give me a live grenade when you asked for it? And she didn't interview. Yes, it would be okay to say no. It would be the right thing to say no. And there is a kind of

[Jack Howard]

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[Mark Kermode]

because of the way in which they think them, which is us, of course, E pluribus. They are all one because of the way they think. And they've got this kind of, hello, Carol. You know, sorry, Carol, we can't interact with you. That whole kind of, you know, the answer phone voice thing, and that is like threatening and Stepford Wivesy and. And all the rest of it. But they don't lie, they don't kill things. I mean, they do eat people. They do eat people, but the people. And then she, at one point, she has to write herself a nut because she starts, you know, feeling affection for them. And she has to write they eat people to remind herself that they're bad.

[Jack Howard]

We find out that they meet, they eat people in two brilliant ways, which is in this kind of horrific discovery of human remains in a fridge. And then it is explained to us why this is okay by John Cena.

[Mark Kermode]

That's right, the entity previously known as John Cena.

[Jack Howard]

I also love that, like, when she first gets the explanation from somebody on the television who's talking directly to her when she's on the phone to them, he's like, oh, I just happen to be wearing a suit at the time. Yes. And this would look official to you,

[Mark Kermode]

but he's not head of Homeland Security. He's head of transport or something. He just happened to be there and he was doing the thing. And the other thing, I was talking to Simon Mayo about this, about what's horrifying. And one of the things that he said was, well, you can't ever have stories anymore because everyone knows the story. Right. You can't tell a joke because everyone knows the punchline. You can't, because, sure, okay, fine. And then one of the things that happens is that Carol, who writes romantasy novels about pirates.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, yeah. What does she call them? Like. Like romantic schlock or something? Think highly of her own writing.

[Mark Kermode]

She thinks that her writing is basically that she had a great book in her and this isn't it. But this is what's made her famous. And there's one heartbreaking thing in which she realizes that they, everybody else, the all of them, the others know what her wife thought of the book. And then she asks what the wife thinks about the book. And the answer is kind of heartbreaking. But there is this marvelous moment quite a long way in the series when she starts writing again. And the person that she's befriended, the other that she has befriended, tell us the story. Tell us. And you realize that, of course, she's There's. There's only a handful of people that can do that because everyone knows everyone's stories.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, there's been. There's been quite a lot of things I've seen on Tick Tock where people are like, if I was in Carol's position, I'd be ringing up and being like, okay, so is George R.R. martin in there? I would like you to get together and finish Game of Thrones for me and have it delivered by Next.

[Mark Kermode]

And there's a. There's a thing in it when she steals a picture, which isn't. She does.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, she steals a painting.

[Mark Kermode]

She steals a painting, right. And the paint. The painting speaks to her and she. She takes it. And then the person that she's befriended says, oh, I see you got the paint. She's always going to take it back. I'm just. It's just. I'm just keeping it safely. She says, oh, yeah, no, that's very sensible. It's very sensible because you wouldn't want, like, just wild animals walking into the museum. But there is this lovely sort of question about how are they seeing art? And the fact that Carol is antisocial. She doesn't like people, she's grumpy, she's in a bad mood the whole time, and she is the. You know, she's suddenly the only person. There's a kind of amiga man thing going on. But the things that make her human are the things that she likes, the art that she drinks. She's constantly drinking. And. And. And they are. And they're having to source all this stuff for her, and I just. It's just genius. I mean, how to even come up with that idea about, okay, everyone has become one sort of good hive mind. And our central character is an antisocial rat bag. What's interesting about Hand grenade?

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, but what's. What's interesting about that as well is that the combination of all those different kind of elements to create this. This concept has given people enough information to kind of go, well, is it about AI? Is it about the pandemic? And one particular reading that I think has really stuck with me, that tells you a lot. This is like anything. Like, however you read, something tells you about you, not about the thing. It's a fairly depressed person being told by everyone else, why aren't you happy?

[Mark Kermode]

Yes.

[Jack Howard]

And, like, why can't you just be happy like us?

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah. Why wouldn't you want to be?

[Jack Howard]

And how strange everyone else feels to you when you're in that kind of state.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[Jack Howard]

And that you seem like, no, I'm not the. I'm not the alien. You guys are weird. Like, I'm not the weirdo. Like, I'm seeing things for the way they are in reality, when actually it's more about how Carol is seeing the world. And at one point she, towards the end of the show, chooses to indulge in the happiness and you hear her say, like, I'm just happy. And then we discover through the conversation that all of this has been a manipulation of. Of her to try and get her on side, to become like them. Which also leads me to the beginning of, I think maybe the penultimate or maybe the final episode with the, with the. The girl who's coming of age in the, in the. Yeah, the ritual in that kind of culture, which has a lot of routine and, and just the moment that she joins them and as she's being held back and it's taking over her, the singing stops and they just put down everything. They were doing the show, they were performing.

[Mark Kermode]

That's right.

[Jack Howard]

And they all.

[Mark Kermode]

Thing has been a performance and they

[Jack Howard]

all leave, including the goat, which is also interesting as well because they say that if a pet, because there's a dog earlier, which is also. Again, maybe I'm reading too much into this sort of stuff, but it's a black and white dog that we see earlier. And then the goat is also black and white, kind of creating a link between these kind of things of pets, but in different cultures. And then as they say that, I thought, I thought you didn't keep pets. And they're like, well, if ever, if

[Mark Kermode]

an animal, it needs to be looked after. That's right. Yeah.

[Jack Howard]

They leave the goat behind.

[Mark Kermode]

No, that's right.

[Jack Howard]

So interesting how, how, how much is the they can't lie thing? Is that real or is that something. I don't know, but this is why it's interesting. But to my main point is that like the, the manipulation of them to get what they want out of her. Just because they're doing it in a soft kind way doesn't mean it isn't evil.

[Mark Kermode]

No. And also. And she does use that word, you know, she says you're evil and she talks about, you know, it's an invasion and the others and all that kind of thing. But there is this. I think there is something really horrifying and lonely about it, which is on the, you know, on the one hand, there's the guy who's just, you know, flying around on Air Force One getting everyone to be a sex ladies Being Elvis and all that kind of stuff which you think is.

[Jack Howard]

He does a James Bond scene. It made me laugh so much.

[Mark Kermode]

It was funny.

[Jack Howard]

The opening of him and then the bit when they.

[Mark Kermode]

He tells the person. Yeah, that's right.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mark Kermode]

But that whole thing about being lonely and her finally saying, please come back. I think that is. I mean, I don't. I. I hadn't thought about it being about AI. You know, I hadn't thought about it being about the pandemic. I had thought about it being about loneliness, depression, isolation, and that. That feeling that you are the only. The only person in the world that feels like this. And then when she discovers that she's not. That there are other people, and she immediately thinks, oh, kinship. And then she discovers that the other people aren't who.

[Jack Howard]

They aren't like her either.

[Mark Kermode]

Not what she wants to be. And I think that there is a really interesting conundrum at the center of it, which is that we. We are in the position of that central character. And I have to say, I think Rhea Sihorn is absolutely brilliant because a lot of the. Of the series is really her.

[Jack Howard]

It's. Yeah.

[Mark Kermode]

Interacting. Interacting with. With almost nothing. Because the thing is that the others are just doing this very kind of deadpan thing. Yeah. And even.

[Jack Howard]

But that's even hard as well, I think props to. Especially the actress who plays the person

[Mark Kermode]

that she starts to have the relationship with, who you then also discover is they're all. They're all part of trying to nudge Carol towards. Come on, you know, drink the Kool Aid.

[Jack Howard]

But to perform like Rhea C. Horn absolutely carries the show. She's unbelievable. But to perform everyone and not make it. I mean, that's also. I mean, everything across the board, I think is like a 10 out of 10 with this show.

[Mark Kermode]

There's also this wonderful thing that she discovers that if she. If she confronts them in a certain

[Jack Howard]

way, people die in their thousands.

[Mark Kermode]

In their thousands. And she does the thing about how many people died and it's. And so the. So the whole thing about, you know, she is the harbinger of doom. Like, she has to rein it in because whether it's that. Whether it's the. The grenade or the atom bomb or the. Whatever it is, she's a destructive force.

[Jack Howard]

Yep.

[Mark Kermode]

And the suggestion at the end of the series, because what they. What the. The. The. The others, the human race as it now is, have realized that they need to do is to pass the signal on.

[Jack Howard]

Yes. And that's interesting as well. It brings me back to the. I wish I could remember his name. But the. The guy who travels all the journey to meet Carol, who is actually the embodiment of what she wishes or what she thinks that she is. Yes, she's being faced with that because

[Mark Kermode]

he will not interact with him. He won't have anything to do with him and he resents the fact that they save his life at one point.

[Jack Howard]

He is the one who will save the world. He's the one who's like, I'm here to save the world. That whole journey of like, my name is this. I'm here to save. I would like to save the world. He learns the same thing that. That when he puts him into a certain state, the signal he's found on his radio shifts ever so slightly.

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[Jack Howard]

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[Jack Howard]

And it's a little bit like what we were talking about with the 28 days, weeks, months, years, franchise that. Is there still humanity underneath this virus that's got you? Can I find you beneath all of this?

[Mark Kermode]

We are told, forgive me if I'm mispronoung. We are told at one point that there is. There is a reverse. But the thing is there is. It's suggested that there is something that could be done.

[Jack Howard]

She basically doesn't deny it. Yes. Before she goes into another one of her, like, moments where people end up dying. Yes. So it's suggested, but it's never been fully said.

[Mark Kermode]

Yes, this is reversible, but we do know that there is, there is a. There is a flaw in the perfection of it that it can't that it can be undone, although it can only be undone if there are still people who aren't infected. And the number of people who aren't infected is going down, you know, very, very rapidly. And many of the people who aren't infected, only a handful anyway, don't care. They're just getting on with. There's a really lovely moment when. When you're sort of realizing the ramifications of everybody knows everything. And she swears in front of a child and she gets told off and he goes. He's also. Yeah, he's also the gynecologist. It's like there's nothing that he has.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mark Kermode]

So I. And I think that he's getting to something really essential about the horror of the hive mind, the horror of not. And the fact that she's. And I hadn't really realized this. The fact that she's writing this romantasy fiction, which you think at the beginning it's just a, you know, okay, fine, she's an author, not very good author. And. But that's what she does. And then this other thing happens, but then about seven episodes in. It's. The fact that she's an author is the thing. Oh, yeah, no, of course she can tell stories and nobody else can. And they're so excited you've written another chapter. Can we read it?

[Jack Howard]

Yeah.

[Mark Kermode]

Because they don't have any stories anymore because they don't have any lack of knowledge.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, yeah. And that great moment when she's playing a card game with her and she's like. It's like playing with Google.

[Mark Kermode]

That's right. It's.

[Jack Howard]

It's a fantastic piece of work and I'm sad to say that it will be, I think, a couple of years before we.

[Mark Kermode]

So what's the story now? Because it won a bunch of awards.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, yeah. Just won a Golden Globe and it's. It's been a massive hit very, very quickly. I think Vince Gilligan has basically said it takes me longer than I wish

[Mark Kermode]

it would to write.

[Jack Howard]

Took. Yeah. To write the series, but he is working on it. But I'm just assuming that we're going to be waiting a couple of years. It's going to be like a. The difference. It's going to be like having severance season one and severance season two again. I think it's going to be maybe not quite that long, but it's a shame because it feels like. Not a criticism of the show at all, but it feels like it just ramped up, like.

[Mark Kermode]

Well, it did.

[Jack Howard]

And it feels like it should be. Like I should. Like I should have some idea. Like, I don't know, like. Like it's just. It finished on such a bang of like, now this is where we are.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah.

[Jack Howard]

That I'm almost like, come on, then neck next. And that's just me being frustrated that there aren't more. But.

[Mark Kermode]

But how brilliant that, you know. Okay, fine. So it takes two years. Yeah, we'll. We'll, you know. Yeah, but remember where we were. Remember where we were at the very end. It's interesting as well that the number of episodes. So one of the things that I did recently was I watched all of Twin Peaks again. So, you know, all of the TV series and Firewalk With Me and then Twin Peaks the Return, or limited series, as it was known. And the weird thing about series two of Twin Peaks is that for, you know, like, nine, 10, 11 episodes, it's really good. And then it's rubbish for nine episodes. Like, absolutely rubbish for nine episodes. And then it picks up in the last two. And the thing is that David lynch went off and was doing Wild at Heart, but right up until. So there's this run which is. It's, you know, it's around about 10. And then it. And it ends with the revelation and the whole thing about the dad and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you go, okay, well, that's the end of it. Oh, no, no, there's another 11 episodes. And all that happens in those episodes is that James Hurley, Harley Hurley thingy. Bob goes somewhere, sets up a picnic, and then says, I can't stay here anymore, and drives off on his bike. And that just happens over and over again for like seven episodes. You're going, what is going on? And then there are two at the end. And it's brilliant. You go, okay, There is literally, there is as of Twin Peaks Series 2. That is rubbish. That there is of the whole of Pluribus so far. So I think that. I think that the 10 episodes thing is kind of perfect because it's like, you know, leave them wanting more.

[Jack Howard]

Yes, yes, yes. The reason I was laughing so much, Dan, as well, is because you accidentally just like reminded me of almost a direct Simpsons quote.

[Mark Kermode]

All right.

[Jack Howard]

Where Homer is watching Twins Twin Peaks, and it's like a horse dancing or something like that. And he goes, brilliant. I have no idea what is going on.

[Mark Kermode]

They've got a thing on at the BFI at the moment because they're doing a Lynch retrospective. So the bfi, south bank, they've got this Reproduction of the room. You know, the. The red curtain and the. And the zigzag floor and the chair and the light and the. And the, you know, so you can sit. You can have your photograph taken and think people are queuing up to do it. Yeah, it's. It's amazing. Are you a Twin Peaks fan?

[Jack Howard]

Not really. Like, I've seen. I've seen the episodes and, and the moments that people.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah.

[Jack Howard]

Talk about.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah.

[Jack Howard]

But I've never sat and like, fully watched the show.

[Mark Kermode]

You've never done the second half of series two?

[Jack Howard]

Well, that's the. I mean, I also hear it's not great at times. That's what I hear.

[Mark Kermode]

It's just so.

[Jack Howard]

It's like. And there's so much. There's so much to watch now and. And we've. We've also lived for a golden. I only watched Mad Men recently and that's brilliant. And I like. To the point where, like now, because we would watch it with dinner. You know, I would be plating up dinner and in my head I'd start preparing to hear. And I'm like, no, the show's. I'm not watching it anymore. It's finished. Like, I've got a Pavlovian kind of effect when I'm putting dinner. I'm expecting to hear the. So I've just miss it so much. But I. I just don't know. Like, there's only so much time in the day and only just watching Better Call Saul. I'm having to go at people in the comments who haven't even commented yet and be like, I can't watch everything.

[Mark Kermode]

Did you. Did you watch Pluribus week by week or did you wait until. And then binge it?

[Jack Howard]

We watched maybe three of the episodes that had been released because I was like, oh, yeah, Pluribus is out. I need to watch it. It was only three or so episodes in, and then I think it was around Christmas and we weren't watching anything around Christmas because we were zipping around everywhere in the uk. And then when we got back, it was.

[Mark Kermode]

It was.

[Jack Howard]

It was all out.

[Mark Kermode]

I did week by week, and it was. I mean, it was kind of sublime because you sort of forget now that you just expect. You can just binge everything.

[Jack Howard]

Yes. And I think there is something about, like, being left with what's each episode making you think about rather than talking about.

[Mark Kermode]

You got Pluribus. There's a new Pluribus.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah.

[Mark Kermode]

And honestly, as somebody who. I was so cynical about television, you know, way back, and I think we are living in an extraordinary time. And I think that I have. You know, we talked about. We talked about Better Call Saul being brilliant and Breaking Bad being brilliant. And the Wire, of course, which is. You've seen the Wire. The Wire is arguably the greatest television program ever made.

[Jack Howard]

People say about the Sopranos as well, and I've watched most of the Sopranos,

[Mark Kermode]

but it's astonishingly good. And then you sit there and you watch Pluribus and you go, I'm sorry, that is just. It's up there with the best of it. I thought it was fantastic.

[Jack Howard]

I think there's just something that's happened. It may be in the last decade or so, where television has been allowed to be more daring than the mainstream cinema, that, like, occasionally you get something. We recently talked about the 28 years movies. When I saw 28 years later, the Danny Boyle, you know, the first one back, I was like, wow. Like, oh, yeah. That's what it feels like when an author, like, is, like, going, yeah, I'm doing this whether you like it or not. This is my vision. And I feel like that's very rare in cinema at the moment.

[Mark Kermode]

Maybe it's because of that. You know, the thing everyone always says is that in television, the writer rules.

[Jack Howard]

Yes, the showrunner is the person. But I think sometimes that is true. Like, for example, I think Succession is the greatest TV show ever made. And Jesse Armstrong and. Yeah, it's brilliant. And it's because of the writing and the characters and the way it's shot. And obviously that adds to the. To the show, but it's not particularly experimental or playful. But there are other television shows where I feel like the filmmaking is allowed to be a little bit more daring because, well, I know that they're just like.

[Mark Kermode]

Like, you know, seriously, Twin Peaks, when. When Twin Peaks is at its height, you could just go, this.

[Jack Howard]

This is just.

[Mark Kermode]

You got away with this.

[Jack Howard]

Yes. Obviously, everything in context. Like, I just mean, like, obviously, David lynch is a singular human being. And that. That doesn't mean that, like, every TV show around that time was like that. It was just like, he. He did that. But now I feel like there's. It's like multiple shows, know, you. You could point out where it's like, well, they just, like, I think about, like, in 2019 or whenever the first season of Euphoria came out before it all went nuts and whatever, I remember being like, oh, my God, they're just doing an entire episode where they're just doing, like a. Like a PI. Investigative. Like, she's a detective. And they're like shooting it like it's a detective show. All of a sudden I'm like, this is cool that you're just like allowing yourself. Or the way that like Donald Glover made Atlanta and how wildly different each episode of that could be in a very Twin Peaks way, I imagine.

[Mark Kermode]

Like, there's another thing which is kind of interesting is so. Because the age I am, I loved science fiction when I was a kid and the science fiction series I watched, I said Star Wars, Star Trek was being rerun in the early 70s and it was on television every week. And UFO, the Jerry Anderson series, which I absolutely loved Jerry Anderson. This was live action and it had. It was just the most brilliant thing. And there were two episodes of UFO which aired on late night television, not in kids because they were both so dark and dealing with things that were like. They thought, okay, fine, well, we just. And this was. People would talk about them in the play. Do you know there's two episodes of UFO that we've never seen? Because they've shown it like 10 o'.

[Jack Howard]

Clock.

[Mark Kermode]

Is this true? Anyway, check that, because it is true. The thing that's really lovely at the moment is adult science fiction. Science fiction for grownups is back. And it's like, it's. It's like being a kid, but like grown up.

[Jack Howard]

Yes, yes.

[Mark Kermode]

And Pluribus is like my ufo. It's like, I. I love this.

[Jack Howard]

This is great. Yes, I know exactly what you mean. It's like I just have like a scratch for that kind of stuff where it's like, I, you know, I mean, I mean, my film, the Second Time Around, I think is. It kind of exemplifies the kind of thing I think about those kind of concepts, which is that if you use something in that kind of high concept impossible world to explore something that is deeply human, I think it can feel more truthful than if you didn't include it. It in a sort of sci fi, high concept world. There's something about the human experience which is so weird and indescribable at times that you have to use something impossible to express it.

[Mark Kermode]

I agree, I agree. And I think that that is, you know, science fiction. I mean, all science fiction is allegorical anyway. You know, it's all stuff about the future is now and the aliens are us and everything. But the reason that science fiction is brilliant, I mean, Kurt Vonnegut, I don't whether you're a Kurt Vonnegut fan, but Kurt Vonnegut, who, you know, had a great love of science fiction. But he said, he said the problem with science fiction is the ideas are great and the writing tends to be terrible. So he had this character called Kilgore Trout, who was a science fiction novelist. And in Kurt Vonnegut's books he'd go, kilgore Trout once wrote a story in which. And then he would just tell the story just like in a page. And this was his way of doing, here's the story. This is the interesting idea, this is the setup thing. And actually Douglas Adams takes a lot of inspiration, took a lot of inspiration from that. But I love the idea that Vonnegut, who is like one of the most acclaimed writers of the past century, was obsessed with the idea that science fiction is a genre of ideas. And yes, the writing may be bad. And you know, and Kilgore Trout's stories would always turn up in pornographic magazines because they just needed something between, you know, between the pornographic photographs. And so there is something, but it's trash, you know, but the ideas are brilliant. And the way he got around it was Kilgore Trout once wrote a story in which. And then he'll just do like a two paragraph synopsis of the story. You go, that's brilliant. And then the story would carry on again. I love science fiction. Question. I love it because I love the ideas. You know, I grew up on Doctor who.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah. And this is it. Like, I like it when the ideas are taken seriously though, because I mean that's, that's why I'm such a big fan of what Denis Villeneuve does. And obviously Dune is more like space fantasy, like a, you know, it inspired Star Wars. So it's a bit more in that kind of world. But arrival, like arrival to me is like the pinnacle of like how you can, can use sci fi to do something that's deeply human. And I think that Pluribus is in a similar place where it is, it's. It's human first, but it's put surrounding it in this impossible concepts to kind of in the same way that kind of 28 days years, like, how do people react to this? How would a human being behave if they were in this situation?

[Mark Kermode]

We need to bring this to an end. But I just want to ask you one thing and on a slightly petty. What did you say the name of the film was? The name of the film that Denis Villeneuve directed?

[Jack Howard]

Dune. Dune. Did I say June?

[Mark Kermode]

No, you said Dune. It's Dune. You are from the United Kingdom.

[Jack Howard]

Yes. Okay.

[Mark Kermode]

What's with this Dune thing? I was in the. In the lynch version of it. You know, that's at the beginning when there's this. When there's the thing and it goes in blah, blah, and the House Atreides and the Spice and the Biddle Bong and they're known to the locals as Dune? And you go, no, it's not.

[Jack Howard]

Did it make you happy when Skarsgard in the first one said Myra Bacchus, my June. And that's what I should keep in my head at all times because I do instinctively just say Dune like an idiot. It's like, I might as well just see Americanisms like, yeah, you need to

[Mark Kermode]

get that out of your system.

[Jack Howard]

We'll start calling it trash.

[Mark Kermode]

Exactly. Particularly now. We need to stop doing that.

[Jack Howard]

I'm so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?

[Mark Kermode]

No. Well, there we go. Thanks very much for listening to or indeed watching this come out on film Podcast. If you liked it, hit that. What do you do, Jack?

[Jack Howard]

You know by now, you know, hit the like button.

[Mark Kermode]

The like button.

[Jack Howard]

You smash it.

[Mark Kermode]

Smash it.

[Jack Howard]

Break it into little pieces. Yes. Put it back together and smash it again.

[Mark Kermode]

Yes. If you want to hear me and Simon Mayo talking about films, you get Ker's take. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jack Howard]

And if you would like us to discuss anything else from the TV world, let us know. Do let us know. Because we also do watch that. And I promise to the. To the two people that care, we will get around to doing our Eyes Wide Shut rewatch soon. Because we talked about that a few months ago and we've yet to do it.

[Mark Kermode]

Eyes Wide Shut. Eyes wide. Shit.

[Jack Howard]

We'll see if that holds up. We'll see if you still think that when you rewatch it.

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[Mark Kermode]

Hello, this is Simon Mayo. And this is Mark kermode. He's the UK's best and most trusted film critic. He's a best selling WR broadcaster and national treasure. Far too kind. Kermod and Mayo's Take has all the reviews you need and star guests such as Sir Ian McKellen. Nice to be with you, Emma Stone. That sounds like something I would love to be a part of. Ewan McGregor.

[Jack Howard]

I'm very good.

[Mark Kermode]

How are you doing? Kate Planchette. What was that word you used? Cattywampus. Kerma de Mayo's Take all the film you need, available wherever you get your podcasts.